a year in stories::twenty nine

I had a brilliant string of ideas that led me down a path to make my alternate history novel where Hitler wins the war so so so good. I really can’t wait to write it, though I’ve obligations all over the place to get out of the way first. I might try to serialise it next year instead. Sort of do what I’m doing this year, with the 52 stories, but instead do a novel in however many parts it takes.

Anyrate, those are thoughts for later. The lovely Chelsea’s finished with school now, moving up here in exactly one month, and all the world is green, bright, shining. This year together but apart has been beautiful but hard and I can’t wait for it to end, with us in each other’s arms.

But, yes: story–

The Devil’s Tears

Waking up to ash and sweat, the Devil’s kiss still on my lips. An empty room without you, cold against bareskin though the sun floods in. What will this all be when I’m old, grey, dead? The depression of your body remains, waits for you to fall back in, hold me above you as you scorch beneath me, between me. I’ve felt the waves of your tongue diving through my shores as mountains caught sunlight beyond the glass and birds rode winds through cherry trees out of blossom. It was here, so far from home, that I found you and myself.

These Pacific shores, a sea claimed by two countries, but owned by neither. Who owns the sea? the sky? the grass and the air?

The leaves blew through the park and the trees swayed and your touch became a swirling cyclone condensed in air, taking the cloud for your face. My eyes back to you between my thighs, the grass caressing, and bugs in flight. We weren’t the only ones in heat that day, the birds chasing back and forth above us, careful to not disturb or be disturbed.

I had another then. Do you remember? I belonged to him, I thought. Was promised to him for summer. He was to be my master and I his wife to pump out children who would love me the way I wanted to love him. They would be my solace in a marriage unhappy but secure.

And then there was you.

The Devil. Bursting with raucous energy and throwing sensations in all directions. They struck my skin then slithered through the pores and dissipated into my bloodstream and from that first moment I saw you the torment began. Your face in the sky, carved out of mountains that surround this city I’ve been in so much longer than I planned. I came here to escape but what I found was a life I never wanted but would never give up. A life with you.

Always gone by morning, woken early by the wall of glass and the sun’s lingering blistering fingers.

I’ve kissed the Devil’s lips, held him in my arms as the boy I was promised to screamed over the airwaves of a phone lying still across the floor. I tasted your skin, burning hot electric shock. I’ve held you inside and all around and promised myself to always be yours.

But then you go away and I’m left with only the breeze, the memories of your touch, the smoldering of the night before as seasons collapse into one another, crashing against the shore of the life I saw for myself so long before.

I’ve tasted the Devil’s tears and they were not sweet. I promised to never leave you and you promised to follow me anywhere, everywhere, but now, here, on this last morning of sunlight on these Pacific shores, you left only the traces of your love and I taste it still.